As above

He's had some computer problems lately, that might be what's keeping him away for the moment. He'll probably be back soon anyway.

I heard he passed away from old age, but I can't remember who told me.

Actually, he's has had two weeks of computer hell from repeated rebuilding of his computer system because of mysterious BSODs and corruption of files, finally traced to an intermittent failure in an SATA cable. The damn things aren't very secure in the first instance and it's difficult to tell when they are too loose to keep a good power connection. It's VERY difficult to keep a RAID system running properly, if one of the mirrored drives is having intermittent power failures and completely screwing the other "good" mirrored drive along with itself. And if one downloads a lot of material from the net, particularly things related to RCE, it's also difficult to determine whether the failure is mechanical, electronic, or software corruption related to some malware downloaded with something off the net.

I believe my RCE collection, alone, is now slightly over 140 Gigs. I have most of it on several different HDs, so even I am not sure how much there is and how much is actually duplicates. I guess it is time to try to consolidate and re-organize and get rid of some of the "crap" I've been collecting over the years. But, heck, if I was "organized," I probably wouldn't have all that "stuff" anyway.

Boy is it "fun" to reload "everything" 6-8 times in a two week period, only to have problems return a day or two later. Seems like it takes forever to get all those "updates to the updates to the updates to the updates" downloaded and installed. Now, if only Microsoft and Symantec could figure out how to make Office 2003 and WinFax 10.0+ integrate correctly, without repeated error messages, life would be somewhat back to what passes for "normal" around here.

I used to do my all my work without computers, but the world of technology has changed significantly in the last 35+ years. Anybody remember “manual” typewriters and carbon paper? That was even before there were “electric typewriters” at all. My “first” business “memory” typewriter was even before floppies were available. The magnetic media was stored in and taken out of a storage “sleeve” to be inserted into a slot in the front of the “memory” module, which was slightly larger than the size of the current upright desktop computer boxes. That was one of the first IBM "Memory" Typewriters. No “visual” viewing of the data at all, but it saved completely re-typing the whole damn thing just to do major editing of content.

Almost had to get my old IBM Selectric Typewriter back in working order to get some actual “work” out the door, but even that is difficult when all one’s “data” necessary to actually do productive work is stored in electronic media on a damages/corrupted hard drive and every time it is “restored” it gets screwed up again within a day or two.

Well, at least the power supply on my back up computer waited until most of the re-building was completed before it, also, decided it had had enough of this mortal life, and passed on to that great reward in electronic Heaven, where all electronic components who have lead a good and moral life eventually end up.

Regards,

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I invest some time in using Norton Ghost on a semi-regular basis. Such a time saver.

A "Ghost" image of a "corrupted" file system and "corrupted" operating system does not work any better than the "original" (corrupted) system when the "Ghost" copy was made.

Regards,

Touché.

I use Solid *.RAR Archives WIth 10% Recovery Record.
Monthy Backed up onto DVD's, & Stored In A Safe Cool Place.

I find it amazing how fast I need to backup stuff to disks so I can make room on my hard drive...

The only things I don't understand is how I can fill up 160GB, and 40GB externals, and 40GB Internal; all in about a month, on my freaking dial-up connection...

I can't wait until they get high speed available to me... I connect @ 28.8k...old copper phone lines in this area.

Peace